The BBC Looks At "How Western Civilization Could Collapse"

The political economist Benjamin Friedman once compared modern Western society to a stable bicycle whose wheels are kept spinning by economic growth. Should that forward-propelling motion slow or cease, the pillars that define our society – democracy, individual liberties, social tolerance and more – would begin to teeter. Our world would become an increasingly ugly place, one defined by a scramble over limited resources and a rejection of anyone outside of our immediate group. Should we find no way to get the wheels back in motion, we’d eventually face total societal collapse.

Such collapses have occurred many times in human history, and no civilisation, no matter how seemingly great, is immune to the vulnerabilities that may lead a society to its end. Regardless of how well things are going in the present moment, the situation can always change. Putting aside species-ending events like an asteroid strike, nuclear winter or deadly pandemic, history tells us that it’s usually a plethora of factors that contribute to collapse. What are they, and which, if any, have already begun to surface? It should come as no surprise that humanity is currently on an unsustainable and uncertain path – but just how close are we to reaching the point of no return?

A South African police van is set on fire following protests about inequality in 2016

While it’s impossible to predict the future with certainty, mathematics, science and history can provide hints about the prospects of Western societies for long-term continuation.

Safa Motesharrei, a systems scientist at the University of Maryland, uses computer models to gain a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that can lead to local or global sustainability or collapse. According to findings that Motesharrei and his colleagues published in 2014, there are two factors that matter: ecological strain and economic stratification. The ecological category is the more widely understood and recognised path to potential doom, especially in terms of depletion of natural resources such as groundwater, soil, fisheries and forests – all of which could be worsened by climate change.

That economic stratification may lead to collapse on its own, on the other hand, came as more of a surprise to Motesharrei and his colleagues. Under this scenario, elites push society toward instability and eventual collapse by hoarding huge quantities of wealth and resources, and leaving little or none for commoners who vastly outnumber them yet support them with labour. Eventually, the working population crashes because the portion of wealth allocated to them is not enough, followed by collapse of the elites due to the absence of labour. The inequalities we see today both within and between countries already point to such disparities. For example, the top 10% of global income earners are responsible for almost as much total greenhouse gas emissions as the bottom 90% combined. Similarly, about half the world’s population lives on less than $3 per day.

For both scenarios, the models define a carrying capacity – a total population level that a given environment’s resources can sustain over the long term. If the carrying capacity is overshot by too much, collapse becomes inevitable. That fate is avoidable, however. “If we make rational choices to reduce factors such as inequality, explosive population growth, the rate at which we deplete natural resources and the rate of pollution – all perfectly doable things – then we can avoid collapse and stabilise onto a sustainable trajectory,” Motesharrei said. “But we cannot wait forever to make those decisions.”

One of the most important lessons from Rome’s fall is that complexity has a cost

Unfortunately, some experts believe such tough decisions exceed our political and psychological capabilities. “The world will not rise to the occasion of solving the climate problem during this century, simply because it is more expensive in the short term to solve the problem than it is to just keep acting as usual,” says Jorgen Randers, a professor emeritus of climate strategy at the BI Norwegian Business School, and author of 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years. “The climate problem will get worse and worse and worse because we won’t be able to live up to what we’ve promised to do in the Paris Agreement and elsewhere.”

While we are all in this together, the world’s poorest will feel the effects of collapse first. Indeed, some nations are already serving as canaries in the coal mine for the issues that may eventually pull apart more affluent ones. Syria, for example, enjoyed exceptionally high fertility rates for a time, which fueled rapid population growth. A severe drought in the late 2000s, likely made worse by human-induced climate change, combined with groundwater shortages to cripple agricultural production. That crisis left large numbers of people – especially young men – unemployed, discontent and desperate. Many flooded into urban centres, overwhelming limited resources and services there. Pre-existing ethnic tensions increased, creating fertile grounds for violence and conflict. On top of that, poor governance – including neoliberal policies that eliminated water subsidies in the middle of the drought – tipped the country into civil war in 2011 and sent it careening toward collapse.

In Syria’s case – as with so many other societal collapses throughout history – it was not one but a plethora of factors that contributed, says Thomas Homer-Dixon, chair of global systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Canada, and author of The Upside of Down. Homer-Dixon calls these combined forces tectonic stresses for the way in which they quietly build up and then abruptly erupt, overloading any stabilising mechanisms that otherwise keep a society in check.

The Syrian case aside, another sign that we’re entering into a danger zone, Homer-Dixon says, is the increasing occurrence of what experts call nonlinearities, or sudden, unexpected changes in the world’s order, such as the 2008 economic crisis, the rise of ISIS, Brexit, or Donald Trump’s election.

Some civilisations simply fade out of existence - becoming the stuff of history not with a bang but a whimper

The past can also provide hints for how the future might play out. Take, for example, the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. By the end of the 100BC the Romans had spread across the Mediterranean, to the places most easily accessed by sea. They should have stopped there, but things were going well and they felt empowered to expand to new frontiers by land. While transportation by sea was economical, however, transportation across land was slow and expensive. All the while, they were overextending themselves and running up costs. The Empire managed to remain stable in the ensuing centuries, but repercussions for spreading themselves too thin caught up with them in the 3rd Century, which was plagued by civil war and invasions. The Empire tried to maintain its core lands, even as the army ate up its budget and inflation climbed ever higher as the government debased its silver currency to try to cover its mounting expenses. While some scholars cite the beginning of collapse as the year 410, when the invading Visigoths sacked the capital, that dramatic event was made possible by a downward spiral spanning more than a century.

According to Joseph Tainter, a professor of environment and society at Utah State University and author of The Collapse of Complex Societies, one of the most important lessons from Rome’s fall is that complexity has a cost. As stated in the laws of thermodynamics, it takes energy to maintain any system in a complex, ordered state – and human society is no exception. By the 3rd Century, Rome was increasingly adding new things – an army double the size, a cavalry, subdivided provinces that each needed their own bureaucracies, courts and defences – just to maintain its status quo and keep from sliding backwards. Eventually, it could no longer afford to prop up those heightened complexities. It was fiscal weakness, not war, that did the Empire in.

So far, modern Western societies have largely been able to postpone similar precipitators of collapse through fossil fuels and industrial technologies – think hydraulic fracturing coming along in 2008, just in time to offset soaring oil prices. Tainter suspects this will not always be the case, however. “Imagine the costs if we have to build a seawall around Manhattan, just to protect against storms and rising tides,” he says. Eventually, investment in complexity as a problem-solving strategy reaches a point of diminishing returns, leading to fiscal weakness and vulnerability to collapse. That is, he says “unless we find a way to pay for the complexity, as our ancestors did when they increasingly ran societies on fossil fuels.”

A protest group in Argentina demonstrates against United States interference in the crises in Syria and Venezuela

Also paralleling Rome, Homer-Dixon predicts that Western societies’ collapse will be preceded by a retraction of people and resources back to their core homelands. As poorer nations continue to disintegrate amid conflicts and natural disasters, enormous waves of migrants will stream out of failing regions, seeking refuge in more stable states. Western societies will respond with restrictions and even bans on immigration; multi-billion dollar walls and border-patrolling drones and troops; heightened security on who and what gets in; and more authoritarian, populist styles of governing. “It’s almost an immunological attempt by countries to sustain a periphery and push pressure back,” Homer-Dixon says.

Meanwhile, a widening gap between rich and poor within those already vulnerable Western nations will push society toward further instability from the inside. “By 2050, the US and UK will have evolved into two-class societies where a small elite lives a good life and there is declining well-being for the majority,” Randers says. “What will collapse is equity.”

Whether in the US, UK or elsewhere, the more dissatisfied and afraid people become, Homer-Dixon says, the more of a tendency they have to cling to their in-group identity – whether religious, racial or national. Denial, including of the emerging prospect of societal collapse itself, will be widespread, as will rejection of evidence-based fact. If people admit that problems exist at all, they will assign blame for those problems to everyone outside of their in-group, building up resentment. “You’re setting up the psychological and social prerequisites for mass violence,” Homer-Dixon says. When localised violence finally does break out, or another country or group decides to invade, collapse will be difficult to avoid.

Europe, with its close proximity to Africa, its land bridge to the Middle East and its neighbourly status with more politically volatile nations to the East, will feel these pressures first. The US will likely hold out longer, surrounded as it is by ocean buffers.

A severe drought in Syria left many people – especially young men – unemployed, discontent and desperate, which may have been a factor that led to civil war

On the other hand, Western societies may not meet with a violent, dramatic end. In some cases, civilisations simply fade out of existence – becoming the stuff of history not with a bang but a whimper. The British Empire has been on this path since 1918, Randers says, and other Western nations might go this route as well. As time passes, they will become increasingly inconsequential and, in response to the problems driving their slow fade-out, will also starkly depart from the values they hold dear today. “Western nations are not going to collapse, but the smooth operation and friendly nature of Western society will disappear, because inequity is going to explode,” Randers argues. “Democratic, liberal society will fail, while stronger governments like China will be the winners.”

Some of these forecasts and early warning signs should sound familiar, precisely because they are already underway. While Homer-Dixon is not surprised at the world’s recent turn of events – he predicted some of them in his 2006 book – he didn’t expect these developments to occur before the mid-2020s.

Western civilisation is not a lost cause, however. Using reason and science to guide decisions, paired with extraordinary leadership and exceptional goodwill, human society can progress to higher and higher levels of well-being and development, Homer-Dixon says. Even as we weather the coming stresses of climate change, population growth and dropping energy returns, we can maintain our societies and better them. But that requires resisting the very natural urge, when confronted with such overwhelming pressures, to become less cooperative, less generous and less open to reason. “The question is, how can we manage to preserve some kind of humane world as we make our way through these changes?” Homer-Dixon says.

BBC are the biggest pack of lying arseholes in History. Their propaganda version of what led to the "civil" war in Syria is despicable. Those dumb fucks in the UK fund there own brainwashing service through the licence fee.

And the 'British Bullshit Corporation', the Offical Propagandist Of The Wafare State, IS - via its incessant ever-spewing saccharin-spigot of FAKE NEWS - "Ohhh...look over there! Saddam, Ghaddafi, Assad <'villain du jour' here> is gassing, de-incubating, kebab-ing (...) children! <'crocodile tears' here>. Its our MORAL DUTY to annihilate the country!!!!" - in LARGE part reponsible for the 'Demise Of the West' that it now wrings its hands over and attempts to parlay-off onto other causes (as if "the skimmers" haven't skimmed-off enuf already)

Alumnus George Orwell was up the BBC's duplicity & "tricks of the trade" as famously depicted in 1984s 'Ministry Of Truth'

The US has fallen into the hole it created when it developed neoclassical economics.

Neoclassical economics is a rigged economicsand hides the parasitic nature of rentiers.

US labour has been priced out of global labour markets by soaring housing, healthcare and education costs which all have to be covered by wages. Businesses then complain about the rising minimum wage necessary to cover these costs.

It’s so much cheaper to use Eastern labour, the cost of living is so much lower there.

They rolled this bad economics out globally.

The UK isn’t far behind with a nation of BTL rentiers.

Professor Werner:

“Classical and neo-classical economics, as dominant today, has used the deductive methodology: Untested axioms and unrealistic assumptions are the basis for the formulation of theoretical dream worlds that are used to present particular ‘results’. As discussed in Werner (2005), this methodology is particularly suited to deriving and justifying preconceived ideas and conclusions, through a process of working backwards from the desired ‘conclusions’, to establish the kind of model that can deliver them, and then formulating the kind of framework that could justify this model by choosing suitable assumptions and ‘axioms’. In other words, the deductive methodology is uniquely suited for manipulation by being based on axioms and assumptions that can be picked at will in order to obtain pre-determined desired outcomes and justify favoured policy recommendations. It can be said that the deductive methodology is useful for producing arguments that may give a scientific appearance, but are merely presenting a pre-determined opinion.”

Michael Hudson is of the same opinion.

It was designed to hide the distinction between “earned” and “unearned” income and the once separate areas of “capital” and “land” are conflated, the idle rentiers are now productive members of society.

But they aren’t and over 100 years later a 21st Nobel Prize winning economist re-discovers the problem masked at the end of the 19th Century and known to Classical Economists.

“Income inequality is not killing capitalism in the United States, but rent-seekers like the banking and the health-care sectors just might” Angus Deaton

You can hide the problem in economics, but it still exists.

Say’s Law “Supply creates its own demand”

They need that to keep wages low and maximise profits.

You can hide the problem in economics, but it still exists.

Larry Summers and the IMF are both seeing the problems in demand (from low wages and/or a high cost living).

“But that was yesterday’s problem, Summers said. The economy now faces secular stagnation, or a chronic lack of demand."

The IMF are talking about problems with global aggregate demand.

Economics can use Say’s Law, but if it isn’t true the problems will manifest themselves as they have.

Trickledown – but if it isn’t true the problems will manifest themselves as they have.

Debt doesn’t matter with current “financial intermediation theory” – but if it isn’t true the problems will manifest themselves as they have.

Austerity will put you on the path to recovery – but if it isn’t true the problems will manifest themselves as they have (How’s it going Greece?).

yep... supply of horseshit is only valuable if there are sufficient roses to fertilize. otherwise you simply have a pile of hoseshit.

an approach to a "golden age" recedes as more and more capital is spent on quality rather than quality.

even the FT once said "times change - values don't" - that was before its editorial board regressed into libtard socialism that somebody else has to pay for - or until nobody is able to pay and debt accumulates - until that too cannot be repaid at any level of interest rates but NIRP or ZIRP.

the end of days for libtard socialism is here - another "ism" is needed.

"Abe, I have a great idea!""What is it, Mordecai?""Let's just print money out of nothing!""How's that work?""We bribe the government to use only our funny money!""We can discuss it at the bar mitzvah tonight!"

"...and yet, our BBC story concludes Civilization can be saved if Government resigns and decentralizes. Additional safety for survival would come if the entire Israeli Government was arrested and tried on War Crimes."

"Eventually, the working population crashes because the portion of wealth allocated to them is not enough, followed by collapse of the elites due to the absence of labour."

Those of us who create and accumulate wealth need far fewer workers in our support structure than was historically the case. Automation and robotization will see to that. We need a technical class; a service worker class (including medical services); science, defence and other professional sectors. The sub-strata of humanity will not be needed this time but only constitute a damaging resource drain in the future. Thus they should be phased out: kept out of civilized countries and left to generate their own resources as best they can in their areas (Afrtica, the Middle East, etc) without access to other resources, including of course advanced technology. Civilization must be protected by rapid development of robotics, including military robotics to provide comprehensive border controls and automatically repel invasion forces as those currently seen overwhelming parts of Europe.

"A severe drought in the late 2000s, likely made worse by human-induced climate change"

Evidence? One of those gratuitous libtard remarks thrown in without any proof whatsoever - typical BBC propaganda.

"But that requires resisting the very natural urge, when confronted with such overwhelming pressures, to become less cooperative, less generous and less open to reason."

Listen to the whinging of an individual who has probably never created a single object or idea that the market would voluntarily purchase in his life. I think, to the contrary, that we are becoming more open to reason, primarily realising that we have been dominated by a vile ideology built on theft from those who produce and generate wealth: socialism; and that we are finding it increasingly reasonable that those who generate wealth should keep the products of their life and use them as they see fit rather than having them stolen by crime syndicates calling themselves governments. That is reason!

"Thus they should be phased out: kept out of civilized countries and left to generate their own resources as best they can in their areas (Afrtica, the Middle East, etc) without access to other resources, including of course advanced technology."

Dude. Are you as fucked up as this imaginary world that you live in? Has it ever occured to you that one day the monetary system may change,and your status of "Those of us who create and accumulate wealth" may be reversed?

I have never read a more pompus,self propagating,egotistical comment. I hope you wake up and find youself with a can of pencils and a cup standing on Wall Street in a tattered suit begging for someone to spare a dime.

… a widening gap between rich and poor within those already vulnerable Western nations will push society toward further instability from the inside.

“What will collapse is equity.”

CORRECT !

“Europe, with its close proximity to Africa, its land bridge to the Middle East and its neighbourly status with more politically volatile nations to the East, will feel these pressures first. The US will likely hold out longer, surrounded as it is by ocean buffers.”

WRONG ! Pressure from the inside is much more important. The belief that the Atlantic and the Pacific protect the US against the effects of “a widening gap between rich and poor” is absurd and borrowed from the “good old days” where threats came in the form of canons, tanks and foreign regular soldiers.

If it is correct that the real threat to "Western civilization" (or rather "democracy" and "capitalism") comes from the exploding levels of inequality in our societies, then the US is certainly in more and imminent danger of collapsing than any European country where the gaps between rich and poor are still way lower than in the US (except the UK).

To all the people who think the world's surging population will not become a problem because of new energy sources I say, wake up! Anyone with even the slightest mechanical knowledge will tell you that solar panels, windmills and such take a lot of energy to build and often are maintenance intense

Even with the low oil prices of today, we should carry no illusions. The days of cheap energy are behind us and the low-hanging fruit been picked. As the noose of reality and finite resources begins to tighten around the neck of mankind do not expect to hear those in charge scream warnings from the rooftops.

Problems will begin to materialize on a daily basis and reality will be both abrupt and harsh. The article below ponders our fate asking if it is possible the collective human race is governed by the "Peter principle" and if so, how will humanity escape this trap?

The BBC big bullshit cable takes on the down of western civilization I haven't read the whole article but the reason is sure Assad being in power and Syrian emigrants to EU but not the fault of western elite's global ajenda, pls can someone sumerize the article for me?

And ethnic tensions in Syria. Hah. Syria is one of the best places in the Arab world. Assad is popular. The 2011 start of the "civil war" was contrived by al-Qaida. When Assad fought back against the international assault on him he became a "brutal dictator."

ALL the worlds problems are caused by "global warming" or "global climate change", didn't you know that? Yep. it's all my fault for driving a RAM 1500 instead of a Prius (even though I can't fit into one), I'm exceeding my CO2 allowance, so I'll take the blame.

I'm so sick of this global warming shit. The lies, the hyperbole, and the idiots that believe it. When one points out that other planets in this solar system were warming at the same rate as Earth, or that warming ceased almost 20 years ago, these morons go blank and start sputtering out more bullshit and talking points. Just STFU already with global warming (and all it's variants), fewer people are listening today than there were just 10 years ago.

Below is a list of the world's ten most crucial problems counted down from "least to most crucial", The world must begin to address these many problems with long term solutions. Most of these are issues that center on our sustainability. This is an issue that is given far to little attention.

Sadly, politicians do a damn poor job of dealing with such things leaving us without direction. As we look at the human condition we can let fate take us where it may choose or we can take control of our future by proper planning and by guiding it as best we can. I must admit all this sometimes test my ability to be optimistic!

Imagine that. Bill Gates posting a comment on ZH. #1 problem: Over population. I wonder if anyone ever explained to them the amount of habitible land versus number of people on this planet? If governemnts like the US would stop raping and pillaging poor countries,they could develop more land for farming and live stock,and sustain a much larger population. But in your defense,you picked the right article to post your link in.

Interesting to see an item about inequality on Zerohedge. Based on Zerohedge's usual other crap, I'm pretty sure that Zerohedge believes the best way to achieve progress for humanity is an endless stream of discrimination against blacks and women. Isn't this the official Donald Trump web site? Every problem ever imagined is Obama's fault. Obama golfing? Non-stop Zerohedge articles and cartoons. Trump's exponentially worse golfing - the guy deserves a break! Every single week. Whether he can remember which country he has bombed or not. Anyway, nice to see Zerohedge break form once in a blue moon.

"– think hydraulic fracturing coming along in 2008, just in time to offset soaring oil prices."

As the old adage goes, "it is not what you don't know that hurts you, it is what you know that ain't so".

Shale has hardly been a savior for depleting petroleum reserves. Its lower quality has resulted in refinery yields declining by 32% since 2005. Refineries are now paying more for the crude that they must purchase than what they are receiving for their finished products. $2.03/gal versus $1.73.

The end result will be declining crude prices, or escalating finished product prices. Either the extraction portion of the industry will fail from insufficient crude prices, or the general economy will fail from an excessively high finished product cost. The West has not received a pass on collapse from petroleum depletion. It has received a higher margin of debt that it can now never repay. The author appears to have an emotional investment in the belief that his little piece of the world will survive. That is called cognitive dissonance.

Funny to see the BBC playing this game of deceit... the same BS game of manipulating the masses... the BBC is one of the main international propaganda arms of the Western empire.. and here they are trying to point out some realities they helped create and cover up for centuries... all part of the engineered collapse that they are participating in as well... this is the MSM propaganda arm.... help make a mess and then blame it on others and bemoan the mess all the while you keep hiding those that really made it.